Wary India Makes Pakistan Overtures

January 2, 2002|By Celia W. Dugger The New York Times

NEW DELHI, India — Indian officials have begun to consider the possibility that Pakistan's ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, may be prepared to alter Pakistan's long-standing strategy of inciting anti-India violence in Kashmir.

India says Pakistan has sponsored terrorists to fight Indian rule of Kashmir and accused those groups of a Dec. 13 attack on India's Parliament.

Though the Indians deeply mistrust Musharraf, they say perhaps Musharraf is bending under severe pressure from the United States and an extreme military threat from India.

India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, acknowledged as much in his New Year's message Tuesday. If Pakistan is sincere about rooting out terrorism, he said, then India is "willing to walk more than half the distance to work closely with Pakistan to resolve, through dialogue, any issue, including the contentious issue of Jammu and Kashmir."

But the suspicion of Pakistan's motives runs deep here -- and it is possible that the arrests of Islamic militants in Pakistan only signal a tactical retreat to buy time or disguise some new strategy.

"It is still too early to form a final opinion," Arun Jaitley, a senior minister in the Indian government, said in an interview Tuesday.

Musharraf and his subordinates are saying the right things. Musharraf declared on Christmas Day that "wicked, bigoted extremists" would not be allowed to destroy Pakistan from within. Pakistan's foreign minister, Abdul Sattar, has called these Pakistan-based groups "unconstitutional armies," suggesting that Pakistan is searching for a rationale to act against them that's not about India, but about Pakistan's own internal security.

A high-ranking military intelligence official in Pakistan said Tuesday that Musharraf has decided to "completely cut off all support to non-indigenous groups in Kashmir," and has ordered that the military intelligence division that has long dealt with the militant groups be shut down.

India is now trying to test Musharraf's intentions. On Monday it handed over a list of 20 people, most of them Indians, who are suspected of committing sensational acts of terrorism in the past 10 to 15 years.

But on Tuesday, Pakistan said it would not hand over any of the 20 individuals, saying India lacked evidence against them.